MAIN WEATHER AND CLIMATE TRAITS IN THE NORTHEN HEMISPHERE AS OF JANUARY 2024
Air temperature
Once the New Year began, cold Arctic air rushed to the ETR, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East, and brought the record-breaking frosts to the north-west of the ETR, to Central Russia and to the Volga region in the first decade of the month, dropping the thermometer readings close to -40° all over this area. The average temperature anomalies in the first decade were as low as -4…-15° in the ETR, and as -4…-8° in the Asian Territory of Russia.
In the second decade, the frosts became less severe, yet the average temperature in most of the country turned out to be 2-8° lower than normal.
The warmth came in the third decade, replacing the extreme colds recently observed here and there with the decade temperature averages 2-10 or more degrees higher than usual in the same locations, and resulting in new records of warmth in the south of Siberia and of the Far East. In the last days of January, numerous daily temperature maxima were set in the north and north-west of the ETR.
In terms of final monthly averages, two foci of cold weather with subnormal monthly-averaged temperatures were formed in Russia this January: the north-western and central ETR regions as well as the Volga region and the Urals from the west, and Yakutia, Kolyma, Kamchatka, Sakhalin and the Khabarovsk Territory from the east. And between them, i.e., in most of Siberia, as well as outside in Chukotka, the weather was abnormally warm. Negative anomalies of monthly-averaged temperatures amounted to -2…-6°, and positive ones, to more than 2°.
The air temperature monthly-averaged over the whole Russian territory was close to normal. None of the federal districts entered the top twenty warmest for the period from 1891 to 2024.
MAIN WEATHER AND CLIMATE TRAITS IN THE NORTHEN HEMISPHERE AS OF DECEMBER 2023
Air Temperature
The abnormal colds which occupied the northern and central regions of the ETR in the last decade of November intensified even more at the beginning of December. In the first decade, the air temperature was short of 6-10° to reach its normal value. The thermometer readings dropped to -35° in Karelia and to -40° or below in Udmurtia, Bashkiria and the Perm Territory, with new daily minima of air temperatures recorded in the Volga region. A sharp break of temperature patterns occurred in the middle of the month and brought anomalous heat that prevailed across the whole ETR in the third decade. New daily temperature maxima were measured at times everywhere from the Volga to the Urals.
The reign of cold in the first and second decades extended beyond the Urals: the average temperatures were 6-12° below normal in the south of Siberia, and the recorded frosts were colder than -40° in Western Siberia, in the Irkutsk Region, in the Trans-Baikal and in the Primorye Territory, than -50° in Kolyma, and than -60° in Yakutia. New daily temperature minima were set in Buryatia, in the Trans-Baikal Territory, and on Sakhalin.
In the third decade, these anomalous colds survived in the Far East only where the temperature averages were 4-8° below normal in Yakutia, Kolyma and the Khabarovsk Territory, in contrast to Siberia where anomalous warmth came to set new daily temperature maxima in the south and in Yakutia. In the midst of winter, the thermometers in the Khabarovsk Territory showed above +5°.